Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton's
Stax Records

Stax Records was the creation of brother and sister, Jim Stewart and
Estelle Axton.

Twelve years older than Jim, Estelle was brought up in the county of
Middleton, Tennessee. Always strongly interested in music, as a teenager, she had been a
fan of pop music, played the organ and sung soprano in the family gospel quartet.She came
to Memphis in 1935 at the age of sixteen to get her teaching certificate. While attending
Memphis State University she met her husband to be Everett Axton. One year1ater she
returned to Middleton to become her brother's first grade teacher. In 1941 she married
Everett and moved back to Memphis.By this time she was married and had school aged
children of her own. Jim twelve years younger, would later joined her in Memphis, where
Estelle worked as a teller at the Union Planter's Bank in Memphis.

Estelle Axton in front of Satellite Record Shop

Estelle stayed home for ten years raising her two children, before going
to work at Union Planters Bank in 1950. There she stayed until she opened the Satellite
Record Shop in 1961.

Photo courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Jim Stewart was born July 29, 1930 in Middleton, Tennessee. His parents
Ollie and Dexter Steweart ran a farm with Dexter also doing carpentry and brickwork on the
side. Stewart's father bought him a guitar when he was ten. Many Saturday nights he would
listen to the Grand Ole Opry and try to ply along with it. Constantly practicing Stewart
learned by ear. Eventually he and a friend from a band that played at local square dances.

After high school he went to Memphis where he hoped to develop a career as
a country fiddler. Influenced by the Western Swing of Bob Willis ant Texas Playboys, Pee
Wee King and Tex Williams, as well as the honkey tonk sounds of Hank Williams, Moon
Mullican and Ernest Tubb, he played odd jobs while working at Sears Roebuck during the
day. Stewart could be heard on WDIA playing in the early morning as a member of Don
Powell's Country Cowboys.

By late 1950 Stewart was working for the First National Bank.

He went into the Army in 1953 and was in the Special Services where he
played the violin. He studied business at Memphis State in preparation for a banking
career and graduated in 1956. Stewart's intentions were to become a banker, but
while working in a bank, he still played fiddle in Western swing bands around Memphis.

Playing at the Eagle's Nest.
Jim Stewart is pictured at the far right

After getting out of the Army, Stewart returned to his job at the bank and
got a job playing at the Eagle's Nest on Lamar Avenue. Stewart took advantage of the G.I.
Bill and got a B.A. from Memphis State University majoring in business management and
minoring in music.

By 1957 Stewart's interest in recording led him to tape a couple songs
that he took to Sun Records as well as a few other local labels. With the exception of
Erwin Ellis, his barber who owned the small Erwin Records, no one would give him the time
of day. Ellis loaned Stewart his first recording equipment, educated about the value of
publishing and and taught him the basic mechanics of running a small independent record
label and establishing an affiliate publishing company.

Jim Stewart began fooling around recording music in his wife's uncle's
garage around 1957 and he put out his first record in 1958, a country and western song
named "Blue Roses" by a disc jockey named Fred Bylar (Satellite 100). At this
time Stewart was equal partners in the new label with Bylar and a rhythm guitarist named
Neil Herbert, as a three had put in three or four hundred dollars. Only a few hundred
copies were pressed with virtually no copies being sold on its only airplay was on KWEM,
the station where Bylar worked.

Garage where it all started

Stewart, Bylar and Hebert had been recording Satellite's releases in
Stewart's wife's uncle' two car garage on Omni Street using a portable reel-to-reel tape
record owned by Erwin Ellis. Wanting to buy a state of the art Ampex 350 monaural tape
recorder Stewart asked his sister Estelle Axton for help by taking out a mortgage on her
house. After convincing here husband Everett to go along a second mortgage was taken out.
With the $8000 - $9000 Herbert and Bylar were bought out, the Ampex recorder was financed
and badly needed operating capital was provided.

Brunswick Studio
Photo courtesy Rene Wu

Estelle took out a $2500 on her house and they began a record label they
called Satellite (probably because Sputnik, the Russians' first earth satellite, was
launched in October, 1957, and dominated the news). In 1958, Estelle became involved when
Jim Stewart asked her to invest in his record company, she took out a second mortgage on
her home and they bought new recording equipment. The label was located in Brunswick,
Tennessee in an old storehouse.

In the spring of 1959 Stewart recorded his first black group, the
Veltones. The Veltones' "Fool in Love"/"Someday" was released in
in the summer of 1959. In September it was picked up for national distribution by Mercury
Records for an advance of $400 - $500. The record went nowhere and Stewart received no
further money from Mercury.

photo courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul

In 1960, they moved the label back to Memphis to a rented for $150 a month
the old Capitol movie theater on East McLemore and College. Short on money, Estelle
decided to convert the candy counter into a record shop to generate additional
income.Estelle ran a record shop in the front of the building from which they would derive
much of their early income.

After signing the lease, they set about renovating the theatre. In
the next few months after everyone's regular workday and on weekends, acoustical drapes
were hung, a control room was built on stage, carpeting was put on the floors, baffles
were built with burlap and ruffle insulation on the one outside plaster wall to cut down
on echo and a drum stand was built. The hanging of the ceiling baffles was the only work
that they paid professionals to do.

Although the renovations only cost $200 - $200, they again found
themselves cash strapped. Unable to find local investors, Axton again refinanced her house
to get another $4000 of badly needed operating capital. As luck would have it, their next
recording would provide their first hit.

They recorded a local disc jockey named Rufus Thomas, who had had a minor
hit with Sun Records earlier called "Bearcat". Rufus and his 17 year old
daughter Carla recorded a duet titled "Cause I Love You" and it became a local
hit in Memphis. The song came to the attention of Jerry Wexler, who was Vice President of Atlantic Records, he leased the record and obtained a five
year option for future Satellite product for $5000. After "Cause I Love You",
Carla Thomas recorded a song she had written called "Gee Whiz". The record came
out on Satellite, but Wexler immediately claimed it for Atlantic, and it was released
nationally on Atlantic. "Gee Whiz" went to Billboard #5 and became the first big
national hit for Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton.

Estelle Axton's son Packy played tenor sax in a rock and roll band named
the Royal Spades. Along with Packy was Steve Cropper on guitar, Charlie Freeman on guitar,
drummer Terry Johnson baritone sax player Don Nix and bassist Donald "Duck"
Dunn. This group became the Mar-Keys and recorded an instrumental named "Last
Night" which became the next big hit for Jim and Estelle. When this song started up
the charts, Jim Stewart became aware of another record company in California called
"Satellite" so rather than risking litigation, the name of the company was
changed to "Stax", the ST from Stewart and the AX from Axton.

A young piano player named Booker T. Jones lived in the neighborhood near
the Stax studio, and started hanging around. He joined up with Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn
from the Mar-Keys and with Al Jackson and they became the backbone of the "Stax
Sound". They also recorded on their own as Booker T. and MG's (standing for Memphis
Group) and soon had a giant hit named "Green Onions". Steve Cropper became an
important producer for Stax and both wrote songs and produced many other acts for Jim
Stewart.

Johnny Jenkins

Otis Redding

In 1962, Johnny Jenkins came to the Stax studio to record a single for Atlantic. When the
recording session for Jenkins turned into a disaster, they used the last half hour of
studio time to record Jenkin's 21 year old driver, Otis
Redding. He recorded a ballad he had written called "These Arms of Mine".
"These Arms of Mine" was released in October of 1962 on Stax's new rhythm and
blues subsidiary named Volt. It made the charts in March of 1963 and in September of 1963,
Otis came back into the Stax studio and recorded "Pain In My Heart" which became
an even bigger hit.